Baking with rye flour
I love spending time in Northern Finland where we eat beautiful rye bread. It is chewy, lasts long time and has lots of flavour. We love it. So when Shipton Mill asked me to write about rye flour for their website I was delighted. There are three things I really want to stress about baking with rye flour:
- Rye does not contain much gluten so you do not knead the dough very much...just give the ingredients a 'good mix'.
- Baking using rye sourdough starter is easy - it just takes long time. There is lots of proving to be done.
- You can get truly lovely rye flour from Shipton Mill and Doves Farm
This recipe is based on a rye sourdough recipe by my favourite baker Emmanuel Hadjiandreou, the author of the award winning “How to make bread”. I met and worked with Emmanuel last year at the School of Artisan Food on the Welbeck Estate in Nottinghamshire where I watched him perform miracle after miracle with bowls of four, yeast to produce the wonderful bread I have tasted.
This loaf is an example of exquisitely flavoured rye sour dough. I was delighted with the result which was a softer, lighter loaf than I had been expecting. The dough requires very little kneading but it does need a long period of fermentation. This bread making project needs to be started a couple of days before the loaf is required and uses a rye sourdough starter.
The loaf kept really well and I enjoyed a slice toasted a week after it was made. Not even a remote sign of mould anywhere in sight.
Prune and pink pepper rye loaf
Makes one small loaf
Ingredients
- 150g dark rye flour
- 100g rye sourdough starter
- 200g water
- 200g dark rye flour
- 1tsp salt
- 150g hot water
- 200g pitted prunes, chopped
- 1 tbsp pink pepper corns
Method
Grease a loaf tin measuring 21cm x 12cm loaf tin. In one bowl mix the 150g dark rye flour with the rye sourdough starter and 200g water. Cover the bowl with either another inverted bowl or use a clear plastic shower cap and leave to ferment overnight. The following day mix 200g of dark rye flour with the salt and tip over the fermented rye sourdough mixture prepared the day before. Pour the hot water over the dry mixture and mix well. Add the prunes and pink pepper corns and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon.
Transfer the mixture to the prepared loaf tin. Wet a plastic scraper or pallet knife and smooth the surface of the loaf. Dredge the surface of the loaf with rye flour, cover and allow the loaf to rise for two hours. Keep an eye on the dough to ensure it does not rise over the tin. If it does just wipe any extra dough away from the loaf tin. Preheat the oven to 220°/425°F/ gas mark 7.
The dough should rise about 2cm during proving after which it should be placed in the oven for about 30 minutes. Check whether the loaf is cooked by turning it out of the tin and knocking the base. If it sounds hollow the loaf is cooked and should be placed on a wire cooling rack to cool.